January 18, 2023

This is not allegory. I would never do that. This is mere fantasy. It is all about something that happens on Planet Nearth, where I often go when I want to be fantastic.

It is on a slightly different time line than in my previous visits here, but has a few of the same characters and tropes. Alternative timelines are handy things when writing science fiction.

For those of you who do not like stories with morals or unhappy endings, this does not have any of that; promise! There is no advice here for Planet Earth people grappling with a big problem in earth time 2022.

This is just a ‘sci-fi’ story, the mythology of technological humans, made up of some of the conventions of that genre. Often sci-fi and mythology contain loads of allegory and morals and advice, but none of that here, really!

It is all about what happened to Pluto Gazillion of Planet Nearth and many of his associates and subordinates, one sunny day in May in Nearth alternate timeline ONO-1346. He had gathered them together to celebrate the success of a project he and his closest collaborators had initiated a year ago, and to seek consensus as to the next steps.

He was pleased wth the result so far. He believed he had turned to their advantage what could have been a great problem for himself, for most of his collaborators, and even for most of his rivals and competitors.

It was generally agreed that The Megalovirus was something brewed up in a lab to be impossible to create a sterilizing vaccine for. Of course, the information wars were over whose lab it came from, and how it got loose, and why. Pluto had plenty of little birds to tell him that all this suffering was because a small circle of psychotics had gained access to a bioweapons lab and a way to satisfy their yearning for annihilation, and nothing more than this.

Among themselves, Pluto and his circle readily agreed that while The Megalovirus was nastier than previous contagions on Nearth, it could easily have been ended by some basic public health measures and some changes to the way some things were done.

It was exactly these measures and changes which were a big problem for Pluto and his allies. So they put their networks into action and worked to deter and disrupt most measures to defeat The Megalovirus. They had experience with this kind of action from previous pandemics.

But the subordinated publics of Nearth also had some experience at dealing with pandemics. The best knew which measures, strictly applied, alone guaranteed the least harm to the health, prosperity, and rights of Nearthian people. They had learned something of how to organize networks to apply these measures in the face of obstruction from Oligarchic networks.

Pluto and his allies found themselves failing. Public officials they had carefully selected and trained to be utterly incompetent, and had spent a lot of money placing into office, were leaving those offices by back doors while public delegations armed with facts and clubs came in by front doors.

Pluto and his allies had to revise their strategies against noncompliant populations. So it happened that the pandemic caused a disappearance of critical goods and services. This caused mass starvation. This caused the collapse of resistance in most Nearthian states, especially ones where Oligarchic forces already had in place strong social control system
So it was that Pluto Gazillion sat on a Dais in the main hall of his resort on Prospero island, having brought his oligarchic friends together to celebrate the success of these measures. An adequate ratio of profits had been reestablished, though from a noticeably smaller and shrinking population and economy.

True, the Megalovirus had shown an ability to mutate and try again with those who had survived the first waves. It showed little inclination to end anytime soon. But all of this concerned the Plutocrats little; the future would take care of itself because it always had.

The Plutocrats were little concerned with contracting Megalovirus from each other or their minions. They had developed multiple layers of protection around themselves which they denied to ordinary Nearthians. They had largely replaced human servants with sophisticated servbots. They had quick, accurate, and expensive testing systems. If all else failed, they had effective and very expensive treatments for the virus.

Many of the attendees, as a joke, and to mock the populations outside their bubbles, wore higher quality versions of the blue masks worn by the inferior classes of Nearth as protection from the contagion. Some made a joke of pretending to guess which of their friends were behind the masks.

Trays of fancy finger foods and pitchers of exotic drinks were brought in by servbots. The oligarchs pulled down their masks to nibble and to talk. Some wittily hung their masks on the servbots. Others tossed them contemptuously aside. They chatted as the servbots circulated with their trays.

The servbots were not truly autonomous but were remotely controlled by human minds. Most humans in attendance knew that the technology of Nearth was not yet up to building truly autonomous machines. Yet most liked the idea of being physically separated from lesser humans if they could not yet actually dispense with them. Many were gratified by being able to pretend that they could.

It came time for Pluto to speak. His mask was around his chin. He welcomed his guests and began to introduce the business they would get into in detail later in the day.

Resistance to their “just live with it” death mandate seemed to have been broken, but the virus itself continued to cause problems. Sometime fairly soon the pandemic had to be ended, yet the measures which would end it soon were still unacceptable to most of the magnates present.

Pluto introduced the leaders of those key factions within the Nearthian elite which he wished to reconcile and invited them to outline their positions.

Huxley Bubon, head of the Pan Nearthian Ecoharmony League, preferred that the pandemic go on indefinitely, furthering the league’s long stated goal of a ninety percent reduction in planetary population. The better people of Nearth could maintain their standard of living with a smaller working population committed only to supplying them. The overconsumption of planetary resources to feed the useless population would end. Much territory could be returned to its natural habitat.

Eugene Barrings, head of The Barrings Foundation and Industrial Handover Bank, disagreed with this but admitted to being in a dilemma.

He was convinced of the need for, and the possibility of, infinite growth, which required a labor force expanding in numbers or productivity, or both. To resume not just profitability but expansion the pandemic had to end, but what had to be done to end it was abhorrent to him.

He was thus unwilling as yet to discard his theory that the great human herd of Nearth would acquire immunity from Megalovirus and other diseases once the weaker stock had been culled. This aligned with his long standing view that the public health system was a huge waste of money, an industry based on keeping alive the elderly and unfit who should instead die.

In particular, he was infuriated at the idea of paid sick days for victims of Megalovirus. “So we have to pay these people to just lay around being sick?”

Doctor Gelemen of the Better Life Institute suggested a compromise. None of what the different factions of Nearth Oligarchy wanted could be achieved as yet. They would have to be implemented Nearth wide, but the autonomous states were still too strong economically and militarily to be brought into compliance. In fact their relative power seemed to have increased due to the pandemic.

“What I suggest,” said the good doctor, “to avoid this impasse, is to find a more selective and covert way to reduce the unproductive population.

This would achieve the advantages of mass Megalovirus infection without the uncontrollable effects. Our control over information is now much improved, such that we should be able to keep the compliant population within our core states unaware of what we are doing.

This would relieve the great economic drag caused by public health systems, which Mister Barrings speaks of, and go some way to relieving the strain of human population on the planet, which concerns Mister Bubon.

I am prepared to suggest several vectors for carrying out these selective terminations…”

A sweet feminine voice called out; “I‘ve found a great vector for wipin’ out a selected bunch of people who shouldn’t be on the planet.”

“Who spoke?!” Barked Pluto Gazillion as consternation swept the room.
The voice laughed long and ever so sweetly as the guests turned about and finally realized it was coming from one of the servbots. They noticed that this one was of a slightly different design. A mask hung askew from its blinking robot face. It carried a tray of mini cupcakes.

The servbot suddenly shot forward and flung its tray’s contents into Pluto Gazillion’s face. “Greetings, Fraxist dogs! I’m Commander Cupcake, of the People’s Underground Liberation Forces of occupied Nearth. We’re controlling these servbots from a secure location off this island.”

The room filled with indignant growls. Pluto Gazillion lunged at the rebel servbot, which easily evaded him and continued speaking.

“It is my pleasure to inform you that you’re all about to die. But we’re glad you have enjoyed our tasty nibbles. Pease send payment to Rebel Kitchens, a revolution in event catering.”

Cupcake Bot maneuvered with lightning speed to knock over all the food tables, spilling the contents over the floor. The other servbots flung their trays in the air, then exploded, caught fire, and poured out black smoke.

“We’re working with the intelligence services of several of the Independent States of Nearth. These states have finally got tired of the endless effort to protect their own people from infection. They have identified the real cause of the endless pandemic and realized the only way they will ever be rid of it.

They’ve also developed their own very effective means of biowar. Actually, counter biowar.”

Several of the mostly male quests began screaming. A few became incontinent. One flung himself through a sealed second story window. Others took a slower route to the outdoors.

“Glurt Varxin’ Reds!” Roared one guest as he launched at Cupcake Bot, which easily countered him and left him sprawled on the floor, his face in a puddle of spilled yumberry compote.

Said Cupcake Bot; “You have all liberally inhaled an aerosol of biowar agent “Blue”, nicknamed “The Blue Death”. It acts very quickly. Running away won’t save you now. Attacking me, I mean my servbot self, won’t help you but please try; it’s lotsa fun.

The first symptom will be blueness about the nose and then face. Then will come vomiting, diarrhea, severe pain, open sores, and then the real icky stuff…”

Pluto lunged at Cupcake Bot once more, trying to wrench her robot head off. “Which of the …states…which sent you? We’ll send them a payment! Tell them…we’ll wipe them off the…”

Cupcake Bot spun hard, flinging Pluto back toward his Dais. She then rammed him, knocking him flying into the wall.

“Whoooweeee! These bots are great!” She knocked down another rampaging rentier who charged at her.

“Blue Death is an ideal bioweapon for, um…class biowar. It works real quick. The victims die before they get far enough away to infect anyone else. That means it doesn’t transmit and turn into a pandemic.”

Said Doctor Gelemen; ”Commander, I believe you have made a mistake. I have never supported the use of biologic agents as weapons or as a means of population control. It cannot be reliably predicted how they will behave in the actual environment.”

Said Cupcake Bot; “Yes, doctor, we’ll consider your advice. By, by!”

She shot at Gelemen, sending him crashing through another window. “Yowee! Great shot!”

She spun around to see Pluto Gazillion prostrate upon his dais, glaring up at her, his finger wagging at her as his mouth worked furiously yet produced only gurgles, and blood poured from it to soak the mask that was now down around his collar. His face was smeared with cupcake icing and blood, and was turning blue. His body began convulsing. His eyes began rolling.

Close by, Huxley Bubon sat staring into nothing, repeating; “…Inconceivable!…. Inconceivable!…” as his nose turned blue.

“Well, this has been fun but…” Cupcake Bot exploded in a shower of sparks, her robot face blinked out, and she was still. Her smoke added to the haze in the room.

Outside, Eugene Barrings won the race toward the island’s aircraft pad against several other magnates. Several private revgrav aircraft had been unjacked from their charge docks and their boarding stairs were elevating.

Eugene grabbed his own revgrav’s stairs and tried to pull it back down. “What are you (pant) doing? Lower… it…, now! (Gasp) Skraz futz it! Do as I tell you! (Hack)…”

His heavily armed and armoured security mortal put a shot past his ear. Eugene jumped back, astonished.

The stairs retracted, the door closed, and Eugene’s revgrav rose straight up, blowing a cloud of dust and debris over him. His fellow oligarchs wheezed as they arrived at the pad to watch their own means of escape disappear one by one into the clear blue sky.

They stared in horror at each other’s blue noses. Slowly, they all began performing a ‘ring around the rosey’, then one by one they all went ‘husha! husha!’ and they all fell down.

I lied! There is a big fat moral in this story and loads of allegory. I have also committed parody. I am afraid Earth people might not approve of this story.

However, it offers Nearth people, those who have survived so far, an opening to a possible happy ending if they willing to take it. Alternatively, the Nearthian oligarchy could be allowed to regroup and get everything back to normal. This would, of course, lead eventually to a very final ending.

Of course this has created, in sci-fi terms, a split in the time line. The Time Lords had to do their jobs to insure that Planet Nearth did not go out of existence and so the future of Nearth rolls on in two lines for now. Those who existed just before the time split continue in both, totally unaware of the split, or of the existence of another self or reality.

This is because it really did happen as I have told, once upon a timeline on Planet Nearth. But it all is merely fantastic!